“This truly is the last thing in the world I expected to happen,” said Sudomir, the boys cross country coach at Louisville High School. “It never crossed my mind.”

“It” was an apparent explosion, or explosions, “right in front of the Boston Public Library near the finish line,” Sudomir said by telephone about an hour after the explosions. “With the exception of the marathon, there really isn’t anything here that would have caused that type of explosion other than (terrorism).”

The Associated Press reports that at least two are dead and 23 injured.

Sudomir said the situation was “total chaos” at around the 4 p.m. mark as police and rescue squads flooded to the scene of the bombing.

“They have closed the subway down,” he said. “I don’t have any way to get to the airport. I’m supposed to have a 6 p.m. flight back (to Ohio).”

Sudomir was a safe distance when the blast rocked the area. The 40-year-old had finished the race in a time of 3:29:12, the worst of his Boston marathon career.

That hardly mattered little more than an hour later.

“I was about four blocks away when an explosion, or explosions, happened,” Sudomir said. “Then they essentially cut racing off at that point, with thousands of people still on the course.

“They had to call it quits with less than a mile to go.”

Sudomir did say that the explosions could have been much more destructive.

“One good thing out of this, I would say three-fourths of the runners had finished. “That’s a good thing.”